Looking past the deaths of those whom i have seen, there is one particular death that has made a rather unforgettable mark in me. It was not the death of a loving family member nor was it the death of a dear friend but perhaps to your disappointment it was the death of man of whom i do not know the name. A man whom i last saw was struggling for his very life, while being drenched in the tears of his loved ones.

Perhaps an ordinary human being would at least have the slightest emotional memories of the deaths he or she has encountered throughout his or her life, such as the death of the man above, which will eventually lead to some sort of temporal emotional instability, but when it comes to death i as a man whom i see myself as sometimes emotional have become somewhat acquainted towards death itself. I am more touched by the suffering of the living.

When i see a person’s death my heart is not touched by the soulless body but by the grief of those who are suffering due to the hollow body. I am emotionally blunted when it comes to death. But seeing the process of dying itself has made me ponder towards death and i can thank this to the man of whom i do not know his name.

- written in the emergency room, in a hospital at Bandung -

it was late at night, my girlfriend had a high fever, i decided to take her here, she did not look well. i took her to the registration counter. i let her be filling in the forms and answering the questions needed. i turned around curious of this room we were in. i saw a man. he caught my attention. he was laying on a bed, he looked very ill. i stared. i listened. i shouldn’t have.

his heartbeat dwindling, pumping slower and slower, an alarm squeals through the air, a straight green flat line on the monitor of a machine, a nurse giving CPR, a wife crying in despair screaming the word no with all her might, a doctor shouts vee-fib, people backing away, clear! shouts the doctor, no response, the doctor tries again, no response, the doctor tries twice more, yet still no response.

the man is dead.

lifeless yet still warm. a wife and a child crying, all seems to be in slow motion. i stared, i shouldn’t have. the child looked at me, eyes full of tears, my heart tore. the curtains close. yet i am still standing in shock. i am still staring. i shouldn’t have.

and now i am afraid. frightened by death. the process of dying, and of what we will become after death.

- end -

Death, whether we are fond of it or not, is something we have come to accept. Or perhaps forced to accept. do not deny this, we are all afraid of death, whether it be the process of dying, the suffering of dying, or what will become of us after death. we have invented drugs and machines to comfort us when we are dying and we have also invented religion to comfort us as well. telling us that there is eternal happiness after death, or even eternal damnation if we are not playing nice.
i hope this is true. i maybe religionless. but alike any other selfish human being, being given expectations of eternal happiness after death has made death a bit more acceptable. if we could not find peace happiness now, perhaps in the afterlife there is.

i close this note with a poem from one of my favorite poets,
Emily Dickinson entitled Because I Could Not Stop for Death.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

- Emily Dickinson

she died i my hands